Hospital Safety Grades: Riddle Hospital

MEDIA, PA – The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Group released its fall 2017 Hospital Safety Grade report, and Pennsylvania hospitals fared well. So how did Riddle Hospital fare in its report card?

In spring this year, Leapfrog, a non profit group that examines various factors of hospital safety, gave Riddle Hospital a "B" grade. That was a bump up from its "C" grade in fall 2016. However, the hospital earned a "B" in spring 2016 and "As" in fall and spring of 2015.

And this fall, the facility also earned a "B."

You can see Riddle Hospital's full report from Leapfrog online here, which includes breakdowns of how the facility performs in various aspects such as infections incurred by patients, objects left in patients during surgery, and other factors.

The entire study on hospital safety is available here.

"Errors and infections in hospitals are the third leading cause of death in America, and people deserve to know which of their hospitals are best at preventing them," Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog, said in a press release.

Medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections are taken into account by Leapfrog when calculating the grades. The goal of the rankings is to determine a patient's risk of further injury or infection if they visit a certain hospital.

Leapfrog assigns A,B,C,D and F letter grades to general acute-care hospitals in the United States. Leapfrog explains that the safety grade includes 27 measures that are taken together to produce a single letter grade representing a hospital's overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.

A total of 38 Pennsylvania hospitals earned "A" grades, including five Philadelphia hospitals and two Main Line facilities.

All PA hospital ranks are available online here.

The group uses performance measures from a variety of sources, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Leapfrog notes that of the 2,632 hospitals graded in Tuesday's update, 832 earned an "A," 662 a "B," 964 a "C," 159 a "D" and 15 an "F."

With reporting from Kara Seymour

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